“When Darwin and Gumball receive a toy wand in their cereal, Richard takes it hoping that it will actually work – unlike a fraudulent wand from his childhood that caused him to lose faith in everything for years. In an effort to prevent a repeat of that depression, the two of them decide to make all of his wishes come true.”
With the show being moved to a new night, I believed that Cartoon Network had to put forth a strong episode in order to build up a new audience. Well, “The Wand” fell just short of that goal. It wasn’t a bad episode in and of itself – in fact, I enjoyed it – but I don’t believe that it was the strongest episode that they could have gone with and I have never been a big fan of Richard’s antics. All of this episode’s humor stemmed from his crazy wishes and the boys’ improbable fulfillment of those wishes, and there is a lot of humor to be found there, but it felt like the episode dragged a bit up until the point where the boys attempted to stop him even while fulfilling his wishes against them. I liked that spin on the plot; things may have gotten awkward with the love spell and then just plain creepy with the inside-out spell, but it was a welcome variation because the plot had a certain familiarity to it up until that point and it was wise to mix things up.
I do believe that the episode could have been better if it had gotten more characters involved, but at least we got some good scenes with the Robinsons, who have been somewhat underused so far, and Granny JoJo even showed up again in Richard’s flashback. That flashback may have actually been my favorite thing about the episode, as we got to see a bit more of the characters when they were younger and we learned more about Richard’s life as well, although the notion that he screamed through his own wedding is a bit much. I just wish the episode would have ended on a happy note, with Richard accepting what the boys had done and even appreciating it. Having him still be upset over the fraudulent nature of the wand – and then screaming about it for who knows how long – diminished the effect of the heartwarming moment that came before it and cheapened the overall episode. Still, it was an enjoyable episode that served its purpose well enough, and I hope that this new timeslot works out in the end.
